Martina Hentschel

Mesoscopic systems between quantum chaos and many-body effects

Location: Hörsaal ATime: Monday 12.10.2009, 14h c.t.

Mesoscopic systems have attracted a lot of interest in recent years that lead to a multitude of research topics. In this talk we highlight the impact of mesoscopic effects on many-body physics by investigating Fermi edge singularities like the x-ray edge problem and the Kondo effect for quantum dots. We find characteristic differences between the behaviour of bulk and mesoscopic systems, as well as a dependence on the system geometry on the mesoscopic side. We also study optical microcavities where mesoscopic effects become important when the wavelength becomes comparable to the system size such as the radius of curvature of the cavity boundary. They result in deviations from the naively expected ray-wave-correspondence, lead to non-Hamiltonian dynamics and can be important in the dynamics and far-field characteristics of microlasers.